Charita Goshay: A Christmas story

Wednesday

Dec 24, 2008 at 12:01 AMDec 24, 2008 at 4:05 PM

When turmoil engulfs our lives, we would do well to remind ourselves that Christmas is a never-ending story. As much as we care for our children, Christmas is God’s gentle and constant reminder of just how deeply he loves his children, too.

Charita Goshay

They couldn’t afford the trip and really didn’t want to go, especially now -- but they had no choice.

Adulthood, it seems, is filled with such burdens.

They went ahead, knowing that even if they were accosted by robbers, they had nothing to surrender.

As swirling and stinging sands swallowed the roadways, sparse and scraggly trees along the way offered little respite from the merciless sun. At night, they could breathe. As moonlight washed the path ahead, the stars glimmered against a purple-blue sky, like diamonds on the neck of a Nubian queen.

Desperation

They were so poor that they didn’t have enough money to rent a room when they got there. A person with means would have sent a servant to make such arrangements in advance.

They secretly were praying, hoping that, given her condition, they might benefit from someone’s kindness.

It wasn’t to be. In desperation, they found what they could. The baby boy was born in a borrowed cave. A cave!

The dark-haired mother, a teenager by the looks of her, held him close.

Though they lived in the desert, the cold could grow deep. As she wrapped him in strips of cloth brought from home, strangers who heard about their dilemma peeked in and tsk-tsk’d at an obviously poor family bringing yet another hungry mouth into the world.

What possible good could come of such a situation? Of a child doomed to poverty?

The young family was speechless when the mouth of the cave suddenly was filled with shepherds.

Dirty. Scruffy. Shepherds.

Sheer wonder

It made her uneasy. Their presence made no sense. Since when did men care about babies -- especially someone else’s?

But they looked ... almost ... scared. Amid the expressions of sheer wonder, some of the younger ones were babbling about choirs of angels and “goodwill toward men.”

As she looked into their eyes, her heart all but stopped: They knew.

Some 2,000 years later, many parents are scared and deeply worried on this Christmas. Like those young parents of so long ago, they, too, will gaze into the faces of their sleeping children tonight and wonder what kind of futures await.

Will anything good come of their lives?

Amid the fear, it can be easy to forget that something good did come of that sleeping baby. He became the living embodiment of grace and mercy, the perfect expression of God’s unconditional love, wrapped in swaddling clothes.

When turmoil engulfs our lives, we would do well to remind ourselves that Christmas is a never-ending story. As much as we care for our children, Christmas is God’s gentle and constant reminder of just how deeply he loves his children, too.

Charita Goshay can be reached at charita.goshay@cantonrep.com.

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